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Posts tagged ‘night cap’

Or the errours of the people in physick, first written in Latine by the learned physitian James Primrose Doctor in Physick. The Latin version was published in 1638, but the English translation came out in 1651 and featured this image. It was a defence of the arts of the learned physician against quack and untrained doctors written in an entertaining style, presumably so that he could reach the largest audience possible.

The picture shows a poor fellow in his sick bed, being ministered to by a doctor, but also a well meaning goodwife who is trying to help but is being restrained by an angel of mercy. She is wearing a petticoat, waistcoat, long apron, ruff collar and a wide brimmed hat over a linen coif. The doctor in a gown, cap and ruff and the ill fellow in his shirt and night cap.

Here is a closer image of the woman. I’m still not completely sure what she is wearing on her upper half. Perhaps her apron reaches to her chin and she has tucked it under her stiffened bodies? There is a lovely poem on the facing page which represents the busy body trying to take over:

With the description of all sorts of women, good, and bad: from the modest to the maddest, from the most civil, to the scold rampant, their praise and dispraise compendiously related. Also the authors advice how to tame a shrew, or vexe her. By John Taylor, printed in London in 1639

The picture looks like a still from a seventeenth century version of Terry and June, with the wife in smock and coif with cross-cloth on top trying to get her poor hard-working husband out of bed with a ladle, whilst he defends himself with a chair leg. Notice also the discarded doublet on the floor and the upended chamber pot, the contents of which are probably washing towards her unprotected feet.

Wondering why this book is called A Juniper Lecture, I began to read the introduction, and here is the answer.

“It is said that Juniper being on fire is the most lasting wood in the World, and that if the fire of it be rak’d up in the Embers, or Ashes, it will not be extinguished in a year or more, which may bee alluded to some revengeful women, who being once offended, the fire of their malice will hardly be quenched in their Ashes, or Graves. Juniper is hot and drye in the third degree (as Galen saith) and the tongue of a scold is altogether combustible: It is full of prickles, so are a curst womans words very piercing to the ears and sharpe to the heart”